


Shatter My Heart

by simplyprologue



Series: Down the Sky'verse [1]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, PWP, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 04:20:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/657952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“I’m almost finished,” she says, and Bill realizes that she’s known he’s been standing there, in her doorway, for quite some time.</i> She's lost the election, but won something much more. Prequel to my ensemble AU, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/470084/chapters/812901">Down the Sky</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shatter My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr user [theletterdee](http://www.theletterdee.tumblr.com) requested I write the smutty prequel to my more gen (but still AR) fic, Down the Sky. So... I mean it's smut it's a win/win situation for us all, right? 
> 
> Thanks to my betas, [Mira](http://wolfheartedqueen.tumblr.com) and [Rachel](http://wibblywobblyinagoodway.tumblr.com). 
> 
> Title taken from one of Sappho's fragments, the same one as _Down the Sky_.

_Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite,_   
_I beg you, Zeus’s daughter, weaver of snares,_   
_don’t shatter my heart with fierce_   
_pain, goddess._

* * *

“I’m almost finished,” she says, and Bill realizes that she’s known he’s been standing there, in her doorway, for quite some time.  
  
“Take your time.”  
  
She laughs, and the sound is short and hollow and rings somewhere deep in his chest. “There’s not much to pack, Bill.”  
  
 _Gods_ , she thinks. _It’s the wrong choice. What have I done?_  
  
It’s going to be a disaster. It’s going to be a disaster; a waste of years and human life and resources and by the time she-- _if_ she can--grapple her way back into the presidency... what will be left? Baltar is going to kill people, plain and simple. _Oh Gods_. It’s not a sudden realization by half, by anything at all; it’s something that settled in the base of her spine weeks ago, cold and tight. And now it creeps, a slithering darkness, up around her heart.  
  
What is her heart, her soul, to the all of humanity?  
  
And nothing she can think of can comfort the blow.  
  
She shouldn’t have let Bill... she should have gone through with it. _You won’t do this_ , he told her. Had told her it would go straight to her heart. Well, it had. What are her _ethics_ compared to survival? She's compromised so much of herself before. What’s more in the name of survival? Maybe this is the way she’s meant to die.  
  
 _There’s no promised land to take._  
  
Laura laughs again, and it gets caught in her throat, comes up mottled and distorted. It takes her a moment to realize it was a sob.  
  
 _I should be dead_ , she thinks.  
  
She sobs again.  
  
She hears Bill startle, and take an abortive step towards her. Waving him off, she looks down at her desk. It’s empty.  
  
Taking deep, steadying, breaths, Laura whisks away the tears gathering under her eyes. Her throat tightens, and she swallows hard against it, exhaling softly through barely-parted lips.  
  
“So it’s over?” she asks, in a voice she cannot recognize.  
  
He clears his throat. “Yeah. It’s over.”  
  
“That’s it, then...” she says, shoulders tensing. He still hasn’t moved. Brushing the pads of her fingers over the surface of her desk, Laura briefly considers turning around. But she feels frozen, immobile, her hands tethered to this spot. Where will she go? The _Galactica_ , she supposes, for now. And then she’ll settle, because she will. If not because she’ll be asked to teach, then because Baltar won’t allow her and Bill to remain up in space together while he’s down on the frakking planet. “Thank you, Admiral.”  
  
Not even just where will she go... what the frak is she going to do?  
  
 _Teach_ , she reminds herself.  
  
Everyday since the end of the worlds, she’s stared down day after day of eighteen hour work days and endless meetings and reports and crises and standing in the CIC as the cylons bore down on them, again and again, and the cancer, the dreams, the pain and fatigue and sleepless nights and now... what?  
  
Even in the years before the fall... did she even _do_ anything?  
  
 _Teach_ , she thinks. _I’ll teach. And then the cylons will come back and I’ll... lead. And then..._  
  
She’ll die, or she won’t. They’ll all die, or they won’t.  And she’ll...  
  
 _Teach_. While Bill is up in the sky, up protecting them on the _Galactica_ and gods almighty does she even know anyone else? She’ll love the children, because she always does, but does she even remember how to... _know people_ without the gloss of professionalism? Even still--beyond that, how in _hell_ did Bill slip through?  
  
But what will she do now, if she can’t be around to... discuss reports with him. Sit on his couch late into the night. Argue over rations. Yell at each other over motherfrakking _military decisions_... read his books, drink his liquor... see him. Everyday. Wake up knowing she’d see his face, hear his voice. His support, his thoughts. Just feel him, at her side. Every... day.  
  
But he’ll still be the Admiral and she’ll be a...  
  
 _Teacher._  
  
With very few responsibilities and beholden to almost no one.  
  
It doesn’t hit her, as much as it builds out of that cold knot in her spine, shivering upwards and downwards and outwards and cascades through her, taking root in her bones and the empty spaces, filling every hollow she has left. It is something like fear--for she has turned off that part of her for so long--and something like being alive, she suspects, for she has turned that part off for so long as well.  
  
“Laura?” he asks softly, moving at last away from the doorframe and towards her.  
  
Hearing his footsteps moving towards her just makes the words--  
  
The cold takes root, shivers and then shatters, and her synapses misfire in such a way that she just says it, without processing it, but she thinks she’s known it for quite awhile and like everything else, just tamped it down. And she realizes it isn’t cold, but maybe just nerves or her body’s recognition of the fact that she has no facade to scramble behind, with the cancer gone and her presidency over.  
  
“I love you.”  
  
It’s quick, and it stumbles out of her mouth. Rather quietly, but the office is silent except for the soothing churn of the engine, the air vents filtering out stale air and suddenly the cold is now very, very hot and her heart is pounding and all she can think about is how she is very, very, stupid and will never turn around ever again. Baltar can just deal with her standing over his desk when he gets here.  
  
“Laura?” he asks, voice strangely tender. Her fingers tense, suspended on top of her desk. Gods, she’s frakked it up, she knows. She’s gone and wrecked the one relationship she’s had in twelve years that’s actually done anything for her, because she stopped thinking for a whole thirty seconds and opened her mouth while her brain wasn’t working. “Laura, look at me?”  
  
She opens her mouth to say something, anything, to Bill. But... she realizes she has nothing left to say. She just...  
  
She feels him move behind her, warm and solid, and his hands rest lightly on her waist, before skimming forward along her arms. “Let go,” he murmurs, his much larger fingers wrapping around her slim wrists. Her fingers tense, a knee-jerk contrarian reaction, before she deliberately flattens her palms against the desk. Bill releases her wrists, slides his hands down to cover hers.  
  
Laura exhales shakily, before turning her hands over underneath his, so that they’re palm to palm. It isn’t until she laces her fingers through his that she realizes that she’s trembling. “Bill?” she breathes; he brings their hands to his lips, kisses the back of hers.  
  
“Turn around, Laura,” he rasps in her ear, and she shivers, swaying back against him when his hands return to her waist. Slowly, she does, releasing one of her hands, sliding it up the front of his chest. Bill brings his hand to cup her cheek, smoothing his thumb along the plane of her face. Humming, she fights the inclination to let her eyes flutter closed. Her smile is tremulous, but unbreaking.  
  
Perhaps she hasn’t ruined this after all.  
  
His smile matches hers, and then supersedes it, and Laura doesn’t feel cold at all anymore.  
  
“I love you,” she breathes, smile growing to challenge his.  
  
He laughs, and she leans into him. Has she ever felt this weightless? Not since high school, she thinks, not since her mother was diagnosed, not since the car accident. Not since... Laura strokes her hand up his chest, the wool warm and comforting and familiar under her hands; her fingers move up to toy with his collar.  
  
“Say something,” she whispers, eyes playful. The quiet closes in on them, but both are unwilling to truly disrupt it.  
  
He takes a moment longer to look her over, to trace the line of her cheekbone. “I love you, Laura.”  
  
She giggles, disentangling their other hands. “You do, huh?” She places her other hand on his chest, closes the distance between them until they’re standing chest to chest. He nods, both hands cupping her face now. “Convenient,” she murmurs.    
  
“Yeah,” he answers softly.  
  
It happens consciously, deliberately, very much unlike how they came to this moment. He brings his face to hers, and their eyes slotting closed but only barely, only willing to break eye contact the second their mouths slant over the other’s. Their lips meet initially with only the slightest pressure, and when Bill skirts his hands down her sides to her hips, he feels a shiver run through her. Their movements are slow, meticulously so, this second coming together, quickly surpassing the first--her hands coming up to thread through his hair, his fingers molding to her sides, she’s healthy, she’s not the president, she’s doesn’t owe anyone _anything_ and gods she has no idea when this all happened but she wants it to never stop happening, now that it’s begun. It’s like coming up from air, or stumbling back out of the darkness and into the sun and she presses her body tighter against his.  
  
 _Don’t stop_ , she wants to say, but whimpers instead against his mouth. His hands come to the sides of her breasts and she shivers again.  
  
She traces his bottom lip with her tongue, and he opens his mouth to her. And suddenly it stops being slow, stops being meticulous. Starts being sliding hands and groping fingers, and he backs her up against her desk and parts her legs with a knee. And suddenly it’s like a thunderstorm, like summer on Caprica. It’s everything home was and wasn’t--its quick-coming and its violent and heated and they won’t stop it, can’t stop it, and they’re stuck in it so they’ll go out into it, and they’ll...  
  
Laura moves her hands to her blouse, plucking the buttons open. Bill palms her ass before lifting her onto the desk, leaning down over her, laying her down on it, encouraging her to wrap her legs around his waist.  
  
 _Oh frak_ , Bill thinks. She deserves better than a frakking _desk_ the first time they do this. Sweeping his tongue through her mouth one last time, he pulls away. Laura looks adorably tousled--hair fanned out, color high on her cheeks, blouse half-undone, lips kiss-swollen.  
  
“What?” she asks with an eyebrow raised, trying to squirm into a more comfortable position. She wraps her arms around his neck, trying to pull him back down to her.  
  
Without warning, he straightens, pulling her up with him. She squeaks, tightening her grip on him, squinting indignantly when he chuckles.  
  
“You still have a bed here, don’t you?”  
  
“Couch is closer,” she answers lowly, nipping at his chin. “Why?”  
  
His fingers press into her ass, and he tugs her closer to him, until they are groin to groin. Her skirt has bunched up around the tops of her thighs, and he takes the opportunity to slide one of his hands up between her thighs, caress the delicate skin at her apex. Laura groans into his neck, pressing her breasts into his chest, sending a jolt of arousal through them both. He pushes her underwear to one side to stroke her along her folds, pressing in to pay due attention to her clit.  
  
Her head lolls back, and Bill takes the opportunity to kiss along her jaw to behind her ear. “You deserve better than a quick frak on the desk for the first time.”  
  
“I do?” she asks, voice breathy, rolling her hips into his fingers. Worrying her lower lip between teeth, she leans back far enough to look him in the eyes, continuing the movement of her hips as his fingers continue to rub her. Her pupils are widened with arousal, and she makes these tiny, breathy sounds that are soon to drive him crazy, if only because he knows she’ll soon be making them underneath him, as he drives into her over and over...  
  
“Come ‘ere,” he growls, moving to lift her against him. Laura gasps at the sudden lack of contact at her center, and wraps her arms and legs tighter around him as he moves them away from the desk. She giggles, and he nips at her bottom lip. “This is serious.”  
  
“Are you sure?” she asks, laughing. Gods, she’s lost the election, Baltar’s going to make her settle on some godsforsaken planet, the cylons are going to come and kill them all... and she’s giggling like a schoolgirl. Because she loves Bill. And he loves her. And she thinks it’s never been as easy as this. It’s not going to last, the easiness, and she’s wary already, but...  
  
“No,” he snorts, dumping her onto the couch. She shrieks, and then laughs, curling around him when he drops down on top of her. Bill smiles, brushing her hair out of her face, smile growing when she wriggles out of her skirt under him, kicking it off with her shoes. “Are we in a rush?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Her hands come to the waist of his pants, fingers working on pulling his jacket out of it. “When’s the frakweasel getting here?”  
  
“Not until morning.”  
  
“Good,” Laura says with a sigh, nimble fingers undoing the fasteners on his jacket. “We have time.”  
  
“That means,” Bill says, lowering his mouth to the line of her jaw, dropping soft, sweet kisses along it until he once again reaches her mouth. He kisses it once, sucking her lower lip with deliberate intensity before releasing it. “We can _take_ our time.”  
  
She giggles again, and he tries to kiss it off her lips, but she only laughs harder. When she opens her eyes again, she finds him looking down at her with the strangest look on his face.  
  
“What?” she asks, lifting her head to kiss him again, and it’s brief and tender.  
  
He gives her one back in kind, one hand stroking through her hair. “You’re happy.”  
  
“I’m happy.”  
  
“You weren’t twenty minutes ago.”  
  
 _Of course I wasn’t, silly_ , Laura thinks, humming. Instead of responding, she encourages him to take of his jacket and toss it down onto the pile of her own clothing. Rucking up his tanks, she slips her hands under the fabric to feel the skin of his back under her palms, before returning her gaze to his. “I didn’t have anything to be happy about twenty minutes ago.”  
  
She thinks she might steal his tanks, whenever they wind up getting back to his quarters, and then she thinks that she might really have convinced herself that she’s back in high school, stealing her boyfriend’s clothes.  
  
“And now?” he rasps, warm hands unbuttoning the rest of her blouse, stroking the soft skin revealed after he parts the garment. Lowering himself onto his elbows, he begins to drop wet kisses across her chest, the tops of her breasts.  
  
“You’re an idiot,” she answers fondly.  
  
He looks up at her with a daring, crooked smile, a bit of the viper jock he once was looming nearer to the surface than usual. Scoffing playfully, she swats at him.  
  
“Ass. _You_ know.”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“Oh _get up here_.” She pulls him level with her, hands wrapped through the straps of his tanks, her smile both mischievous and the smallest bit demanding. He meets it, eyes flickering back to her breasts one last time before capturing her lips in an abrupt kiss, tongue sliding into her mouth without any hint of hesitation.  
  
In no time, he has her blouse and bra on the floor with the rest of her clothing, leaving her in nothing but her panties. “Very nice,” he says, running his fingers under the thin straps covering the line where her legs meet her hips. “But aren’t they--?”  
  
“Panty lines are a bitch, Bill.”  
  
He keeps his eyes on the lacy emerald green thong, brow raised. “So does that mean you have--”  
  
Laura smirks, leaning her head back when he pulls the fabric down. “You’ll have to find out.”  
  
Bill presses a kiss to the hollow of her throat, directing her to lift her hips so he can pull her underwear down her legs, revealing a trim thatch of auburn curls.  
  
He cups her mound, before sliding his fingers down to her entrance and back again. “Frak, you’re wet.” His fingers aptly locate her clit, circling it with _just_ the right amount of pressure, testing her, watching her face to see what she wants and finally getting it right and Laura gasps, wondering why the everloving frak she never dated a pilot before, thinking of the years he spent in cockpits testing deliberate, precise motions and--  
  
“Gods,” she shudders out, a surge of sharp-sweet pain sparking between her thighs. It builds, rapidly becoming less of a shimmering ripple and more of a steady wave.  
  
His fingers leave her clit; one of his hands move out to behind her knee, spreading her wider, his thumb finding a pulse point there that she never knew existed and pressing down on it.  
  
 _Viper jock_ , she thinks errantly, when his fingers find her entrance and frak into her slowly, with care. She exhales shakily at the sudden change to a slow burn, feeling her pussy clench around him almost desperately.  
  
“Good?” he asks, biting at her chin to get her to look at him.  
  
“Yeah,” she says with a hum, wending her fingers through his hair and rising up to sample his mouth again, moaning into him when he spreads his fingers slightly with the next pass, when his thumb presses in again behind her knee, and she can feel it all from the soles of her feet to right where the pads of his fingers are playing her just so. Her thighs jerk of their own volition, and Bill smiles against her lips, breaking their kiss with a few short, wet, pecks.  
  
He pumps his fingers in and out of her quicker and quicker, feeling himself growing harder in his boxers with every flow of new moisture against his hand, every pulse of her walls around him, every flush of color rising on her breasts, her face. Bringing in his thumb to work her clit in concert to his search to find that frakking spot inside her--  
  
She moans, clutching his shoulders frantically and he crooks his fingers, dragging them along the front of her channel just to see--  
  
Her breathing hitches, turning jagged, her rapid exhales marked by a high, frenzied, noise.  
  
 _Found it_ , he thinks, feeling a surge of confidence when her face creases in tortured pleasure, nose scrunching and lips parting, pumping his fingers faster and faster.  
  
“Oh Gods,” she breathes, her words running together. “Oh Gods don’t stop don’t stop--”  
  
Had he expected this at all, when he came back here tonight? He found her despondent, like he thought he would, but then... he doesn’t know what brought this about in her, and he doesn’t want to question it. He should, and he will later, but right now he just wants to love her, uncritically. He knows her mood will turn. He _knows_ her. Whatever was on her mind when it came in, all of her doubts about this planet, they’ll return. She doesn’t have faith in Baltar, or Baltar’s plans.  
  
But she has faith in him. And he’ll do his frakking best to keep it, and her love.  
  
But right now, he wants her to come. Wants to feel her pussy clamp down around his fingers, knuckle deep in her drenched folds.  
  
His own arousal brings his sights back to her breasts, his eyes honing in on her tight, reddened nipples. Eyes darting back to her face, he lowers his mouth to to one of the nubs, closing his lips around it, sucking when Laura arches her back into him, mouth hanging open against the sensation.  
  
“Bill,” she whimpers, carrying the the l-sound in the back of her throat in a way that makes his hips flex, pressing his erection against her thigh.  
  
The hand at her knee comes to her other breast, teasing the nipple with tiny concentric motions, before moving in to roll it between his thumb and forefinger. He savors the warm flesh under him, the pull of her cunt, her heaving breasts. He does not know how long he’ll be able to, how long she’ll stay with him before settling (because he knows she will, because she has a duty to their people and she’ll fulfill it however she can and one of them has to stay here for when the cylons return, and gods, Bill thinks, _this can only end badly_.)  
  
But he’ll take what he can, while he can. And give what he can.  
  
Her leg, now free, instinctively moves to wrap around his thigh, at last giving her the leverage to counter the thrust of his fingers, and she recklessly grinds her hips into his hand.  
  
Thoughts swirling (because she’s Laura Roslin and she never stops thinking, except twenty minutes ago and she thinks that even though that turned out well for her it’s best not to continue the experiment), her mind is a jumble of touch and taste and scent, the feeling of Bill, compact muscle, coiled power, precision atop her, the smell of recycled air and sweat and laundry soap and something more him, like shaving cream and gods frakking dammit she can’t think, not really, but its him, and it makes her dig her fingernails into his strong biceps and cry out as arousal centers itself in her, building and building and oh gods, she’s _almost there_ , with his mouth at her breast and fingers doing impossibly clever things to her.  
  
He bites down on her nipple only to give it soothing, apologetic, suckling kisses and Laura cries out, the tiny taste of pain knifing through her, sweetly. Bill does it again, slower this time, drawing out the sensation, the scrape of his teeth and he pinches the other nipple between his calloused fingers. _Frakking Lords above_ , Laura thinks distantly when he growls again and grinds his cock into her. Laura writhes, pressing her heel into his hamstring to bring him closer, mind filling with beautiful images of his naked body filling her, pushing her down into the couch cushions, his hips snapping into hers...  
  
“Bill!” she cries. “Now, oh gods, _now_.”  
  
Her spine arches under the strain, the _almost,_ and Bill works in a third finger inside of her, and pressing up, rubbing the spot he had found several minutes early, his thumb pressing on her clit--  
  
“ _Yes_ ,” she moans, shaking her release, eyes closing against all other stimulation. “ _Bill.._ ”  
  
She’s vaguely aware of him pulling her into his arms, his fingers easing gently out of her, plying her with words like beautiful, perfect, and love. Smoothing his hands, his sticky fingers over her loosened limbs, giving her a kiss meant to be sighed into. And she does, toying lazily with his tongue while her grip on him gentles.  
  
“Take your clothes off,” she murmurs a few minutes later, dragging his tanks up and over his head, eyes still closed in bliss.  
  
She slits her eyes open when she feels him sit up to remove his trousers. His body is what she expected it to be, after many hours of cold fantasy, imaginings designed to chase away the pain coursing through her veins, and after that... her eyes are drawn to his scar. Neither of them are supposed to be alive, and yet the Gods saw to restore them to life.  
  
Maybe that trend will hold.  
  
He kicks off his boots and socks, pants and belt and now all their clothing lies in a heap on the floor. Probably wrinkled, Laura thinks, not that it matters much. They don’t owe anyone a frakking thing anymore.  
  
She smiles at him when he settles back into the cradle of her thighs, and smoothes her hands over the expanse of his shoulders, his back. Wondering if they’ve left marks on each other yet, Laura trails a chain of kisses across his left shoulder, biting down slightly as she kants her hips up against his erection.  
  
He groans happily, sliding his cock through her slickened folds. Laura grabs his cock and pushes it through her wetness, teasing her clit with the head. Moaning in response to his girth, Laura tightens her fingers around him to work his shaft, collecting the moisture beading at the top with her thumb and spreading it downwards. When she presses her thumb to the bundle of nerves under the tip, he bucks his hips buck in to hers, breathing heavily in her ear.  
  
“Laura.” His voice is lower than she’s ever heard it (although, she muses, she’ll probably get used to that soon, with all the time that’s about to be on her hands), and gravel-rough. He grunts, nosing the hollow between her cheekbone and her jaw. “Laura, you gotta--”  
  
She spreads her legs as far as they will go on her narrow couch, and then positions him at her entrance, gently guiding him in. The endorphins in her already-overstimulated system send surges of heat in response to the penetration, the ache of lack of use transforming into pins and needles that make her thighs begin to tremble again.  
  
Biting down on her lip, Laura arches against Bill as he thrusts tentatively. They lock eyes, taking the first unsure steps into this new dance. She lifts the leg in danger of falling off the couch and wraps it again around his thigh, caressing the inside of his knee with the balls of her feet, slides her arms under his up to clutch at his back and shoulders. Slowly breaching her with calculated strokes, Bill combs her hair away from her face until he sees her face relax, tension being replaced once again with bliss, her inner walls gripping him like a velvet fist.  
  
Laura moans at the sensation of his cock filling her, splitting her, inch by satisfying inch; at the head of him pushing past the tight ring of muscle at her entrance, his hips changing approach with each shortened pass, until she’s open enough that she feels him bottom out inside of her, and even then he moves one of his hands under her ass, angling her hips just so.  
  
 _I love you_ , she wants to say. So she does.  
  
“Love you too.”  
  
Sex has never been a sentimental thing for her, never something she conflated with love or affection. It was always something she had, something she took. Richard had been a game. She feels like laughing--of course this would happen, now, after the end of the worlds. Get diagnosed with cancer, the worlds literally end. Fall in love with a man as you’re dying, ignore it. Live, have to ignore feelings anyway. Lose, and...  
  
Win?  
  
It’s not nearly as surprising as she thinks it should be when she feels him wiping tears away from her eyes.  
  
“Love you,” he says again, kissing away the tear tracks on her cheeks, and she feels stunned, almost, and digs her nails into his shoulders, undulating her hips against him, urging him with her hands and pussy to go faster, go harder. And he does. When his lips come to rest at her temple, breath loud in her ear, she turns her face to kiss his cheek, bury her face in his neck.  
  
Planting the foot on the leg wrapped around him on the narrow wedge of couch left, Laura begins to meet his thrusts with a twist of her hips, thrusting into his rhythm and finally, it clicks, and Laura throws her head back, and moans.  
  
“ _Frak_.” He trails his mouth down the line of her delicate throat, before sucking at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, making her gasp, pussy clamping down on him involuntarily, thighs quivering around his. “You gonna come again?”  
  
His only response is a pained cry and her nails sharper into his shoulders.  
  
“Gods, Laura. You’re so frakking beautiful like this.” His voice is lust-thickened, strained with arousal, and he wants to see _more_ and _again_ so he trails his hand up her calf, lifts her leg and plants his foot on the floor, and begins to pound into her. The room fills with the sound of wet, slapping flesh, and Laura’s mellifluous pleading cries, his own desperate groans, and a lacquer of building, cloying heat.  
  
He braces himself higher over her, watching the pleasure blossom on her features, sweat dripping down from her brow, dewing up between her breasts on on the soft skin of her stomach.  
  
Laura feels him doubling his efforts, drawing himself up higher against her, and she realizes she’s making those high, desperate cries again, and wonders if she ever made them before, with Richard and she never noticed or... who is she kidding.  
  
The ridge of his pubis meets her clit with every downstroke, the roll of his hips only adding to the building pressure and when he changes the angle just so, colors begin to erupt behind her eyelids.  
  
“There,” she pants. “Oh gods Bill... _Bill._..”  
  
“Yeah?” he grunts. “You gonna come, Laura?”  
  
“Yes,” she hisses. “Yeah, Bill. Oh gods, yeah, I’m gonna--”  
  
“Come, Laura.” He looks down at the sight of them joining, his cock moving through her wetness, soaked in it, the muscles under the skin of her hips jolting in response. “Come for me.”  
  
Her hands fly from his shoulders to the base of his skull, pulling his mouth down to hers, meeting him for a sloppy, unforgiving kiss, pressing his chest tight against hers, until she can feel every inch of his sweat-slicked skin against hers, the chafe of his chest hair, his groin sliding deliciously on her clit. Feeling her beginning to tremble, Bill picks up his speed yet again--  
  
 _Almost,_ he thinks. _She’s almost there--_  
  
“I love you,” he gasps, breaking the kiss, feeling his orgasm build in the base of his spine. “I love you,” he breathes into her ear, eyes tightly shut against it.  
  
And she shatters, a sob wrenched with her alongside her orgasm. Pleasure explodes through her muscles, ravaging her senses. Her fingers tighten in his hair, arms hugging him impossibly tight, and her pussy, drenching him with more and more until her legs quiver uselessly and he draws it out for as long as he can, feasting on her raw cries, kissing away a fresh wave of tears.  
  
“I love you,” she whimpers as his hips slow to a telltale grind, and turns her head to swallow his plaintive groan. He jerks his hips in indolent circles, pulsing inside of her.  
  
He trembles over her, trying to keep himself from collapsing on top of her. Carefully, he pulls them both onto their sides, before rolling onto his back and dragging Laura to lie on his chest, his softening erection slipping out of her. She moans, rolling her hips one last time against him. A moment later, she reaches a hand up to yank down the blanket covering the back of the couch tand spreads it over them. They both know she’ll have to get up to use the head in a minute, but for now they just want to lay together.  
  
 _Who knows how long we have to do it_ , Laura thinks, propping her chin on his chest, smiling contentedly when he winds his hands through her mussed curls. She wonders how soon Baltar will see them separated, or how soon she’ll leave to set up the school, and whether or not those two will be one and the same.  
  
If all goes well, she’ll run for president again in the next election cycle. Baltar will have proved his complete incompetence, but not without ruining them all. She and Bill... she doesn’t want to think too much about that in the long-term, but four-year relationship won’t be broken up for a conflict of interest.  
  
And if it doesn’t go well...  
  
She smiles anyway, pushing the thoughts away for a night that she won’t have him. At least they’d be only hurting themselves.

* * *

**One year later...**

* * *

Laura exits Cottle’s haphazard tent clinic, pulling her raggedy sweater tighter around her. It’s too big, and a bit bulky, but she’ll be thankful for it in the coming months, she thinks dazedly, looking at the damp, overcast sky. She sighs, and makes her way back to the school tent.  
  
Frakking Baltar has made it impossible for any officer to go on shore leave for going on two months now. Laura doubts she’ll be able to contact him either, with transports monitored and supply runs sparse with the weather so miserable and vis so low.  
  
But she praises the gods when she sees Lt. Katraine standing in the otherwise empty school tent, holding a box of supplies--a love letter without being a love letter. And probably an actual love letter, once Laura digs through it well enough. She feels the tension she’s been holding in her walk back from Cottle’s dissipate at once, and the Lieutenant is more than obliging to ignore the shaking in her hands as Laura urgently (but without haste, she thinks her words through, even now) writes Bill a letter. She signs it with her love, and hands it over into Katraine’s care.  
  
After the pilot is gone, Laura rounds the classroom to her desk and sits at it wearily, tunneling her hands through her hair.  
  
 _Gods,_ she thinks, still more than a bit dazed.  
  
Less than an hour later, the sound of cylon raiders shatters down the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews are very much appreciated, but thanks for reading!


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